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White Sand Volume 1 Reactions


WeiryWriter

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Edit: Please keep discussion of the prose draft as minimal as possible.  See this thread for more spoiler-y reactions.

I just finished reading the first volume of the White Sand graphic novel and really enjoyed it.  I don't know if I'm the biggest fan of the art style they went with but it did start to grow on me.  As someone who has read the prose version it was really fun picking up on certain bits of foreshadowing.

My one real complaint was that it ended way too soon.

So what does everyone else think?

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3 hours ago, WeiryWriter said:

I just finished reading the first volume of the White Sand graphic novel and really enjoyed it.  I don't know if I'm the biggest fan of the art style they went with but it did start to grow on me.  As someone who has read the prose version it was really fun picking up on certain bits of foreshadowing.

My one real complaint was that it ended way too soon.

So what does everyone else think?

Completely agree I read through it very quickly.  I could have done without the police woman storyline and gotten more form the other two it was frustratingly short story wise.  The artwork was really cool and I appreciated the taste of the magic we got but it needed to be longer!

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Where is the magic theory? I enjoy Sanderson partly because of the magic systems - here we didn't even got an Ars Arcanum. The on-the-run explanations came a bit short.

Otherwise - not a bad job, considering everything; but in it's current state not my favorite Sanderson by far. Probably I'll like it more in parts 2 and 3.

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Just finished. I hate to be a naysayer, but I'm really disappointed by this. Full disclosure, I'm not a fan of graphic novels in the first place, but this really is a terrible format for a Sanderson work. Really hard to follow along at times, especially when it starts jumping around between scenes and introducing new characters. The story itself is intriguing (insofar as I can tell from only getting the first third of it - another draw back of the format), I just really hope this gets released as a (polished/official) novel at some point, because this is extremely underwhelming to me. :(

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I've just finished the digital version on my phone. And I find myself not a huge fan of comics I must say (it's the first serious comic I've read, not counting Donald Duck when I was a kid). The story seems interesting, but I got tired quite fast because of the constant scrolling, zooming and switching between reading and viewing pictures.

The story got me hooked. I want to understand what's going on with Kenton's power. Why he wasn't able to use sands during the ambush and then, suddenly in the city he got powered up and can now do things he couldn't before. 

Also, what's up with people from the dark side having dark skin and people from the bright side having bright skin? I'd expect it to be reversed... Well, maybe this will be explained in next books. Maybe I'll try to get the prose version and enjoy it more...

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I definitely warmed up to the format as the story went along, but man did we get the smallest possible taste of this world!  I had the same feeling I did when I started reading The Walking Dead comics - it was great until I caught up to waiting for new releases, but each individual volume was always a let down.  It's like the story is only so good until you can see the whole picture, which, if this is all we get per volume of White Sand, will leave me let down until we get it all.

Though, I agree with some of the other reactions - the ending was in a really awkward place.  Anyone remember when Brandon will be releasing the other two volumes of White Sand?

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Very hard to follow, especially because the extremely distinctive art style made everybody look kind of similar. For example, Ais's kid looked a lot like N'Teese. But I though the Sand Mastery was awesome! I think that the reason behind choosing white sand as a graphic novel was that Sand Mastery was very well shown visually. The outlining of the people doing the mastery was kind of cheesy, but the sand threads themselves were cool. And agreeing with Mestiv, why would the people living in the sunless land have dark skin, and the people living in the desert have light skin? That makes no sense at all!

Also, where is Hoid?

Edited by Figberts
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Just about to start it, your reactions are making me worried though.. guess I will have to see for myself! I think its important to remember that Graphic Novels aren't for everybody, even one that is based on a story by your favorite author won't do it for you if its not your thing.  I personally have always loved Graphic Novels, as a kid reading was hard for me and Graphic Novels and comic books made a huge difference in building those skills and bridging that gap.  Now a days you can find Graphic Novel adaptations of classic novels in school libraries, it warms my heart :D

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Aarik isn't Hoid. He and Kenton have been friends for a long time, and his father is one of the Taisha. The only way for Aarik to be Hoid is if Hoid is perfectly impersonating an actual person from Taldain.

Did anyone notice what appears to be modern machinery on the first page of Chapter 2? I wonder what's up with that.

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1 hour ago, DSC01 said:

Aarik isn't Hoid. He and Kenton have been friends for a long time, and his father is one of the Taisha. The only way for Aarik to be Hoid is if Hoid is perfectly impersonating an actual person from Taldain.

Did anyone notice what appears to be modern machinery on the first page of Chapter 2? I wonder what's up with that.

Hm, damnation. Guess that I didn't saw the guy in the alley as Aarik comes ftrom the fact that I could easily differentiate only Khriss, everybody else was drawn a bit too uniformous. How the actual Sands were you supposed to distinguish between sandmasters in full costume with shaven heads?
But otherwise? The guy seemed to bear himself exactly in Hoid's manner.
If Hoid has a manner, at least. Manners he has not.

 

The machinery looks suspiciously like radios. But there shouldn't be radios, should them?

Edited by Alfa
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1 hour ago, Alfa said:

Does anybody else think, that Khriss stepped on the scenery a bit Hollywod-escly? Especially reminded me of Julia Roberts.

Do you mean in her first appearance? It was bad. She stood there like a bimbo; very disappointing.

You should never meet your heroes I guess

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16 minutes ago, aviv1525 said:

Do you mean in her first appearance? It was bad. She stood there like a bimbo; very disappointing.

You should never meet your heroes I guess

Well I would point out that that is Khriss at the beginning of her story.  She still has a lot of growing up to do so I think it's a little unfair to expect her to be the awesome Ars Arcanum Author when just hasn't had the life experiences that make her so?

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3 minutes ago, WeiryWriter said:

Well I would point out that that is Khriss at the beginning of her story.  She still has a lot of growing up to do so I think it's a little unfair to expect her to be the awesome Ars Arcanum Author when just hasn't had the life experiences that make her so?

But really, who in all Damnation, honestly, walks into a tent near a battlefield with a supposedly dead perosn inside after a bad day with half your expedition, guide included, killed and with almost no water in a way I would expect from models on the catwalk during a Fashion Week in Paris?

That just seems kind of wrong.

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Oh also on the topic of the Darksiders being darkerskinned that the Daysiders I remembered the following WoB posted by @BlackYeti in the PM thread back in August 2014:

Quote

Q. How did you get the temperature differential between the two halves of the planet such that life could survive on both sides and travel between them with only mild discomfort?

A. We’ve got a couple of things going on here that are helping with it. The thing about darkside is that, and I’ve had to run this through my physicist and they’re all kind of umm, so we’re still working on the physics, but the idea is that there is a light source over there, but it works like a black light. And so there’s warmth, and there’s radiation, so that’s why people over there are dark skinned, they’ve actually adapted to this radiation: there’s a lot of UV, and things like that. But it works like a black light, so for a daysider going over there it feels dark and dim, but it’s more twilight-ish than it is completely dark. With that and jet streams and stuff, we were able to justify it mostly. It’s still going to be cold on the other side, but I didn’t want it to be snowing all the time over there, and so we had to do some jumping through hoops astrologically to make it work.

We'll also probably learn a little bit more in the Taldain essay from Arcanum Unbounded.

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It didn't feel like a lot, but I guess it's because it went so fast. It's definitely a different format than text - I don't naturally look at the images, just go from text to text, so reading it is much quicker-paced than reading a novel. I feel like I didn't get a good handle on the terminology, either, since it only came up when they were actually speaking it.

But that's all just me having to get accustomed to a graphic novel and slow down, appreciate the scenery. The only real issue I had was with the scene-changes; they seemed a little abrupt, to go from a climactic point of one story to a fairly lethargic part in another. That kind of transition works well in novels as chapter breaks, that leave you with a cliffhanger, but I think the graphic novel needs smoother scene changes.

About the mysterious tech... I assumed that it's something from Kenton's mother, from the Darkside, and that there's some kind of secret alliance between the Lord Mastrell and someone on Darkside. We'll see if that gets born out (no spoilers, those with the prose!).

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I liked it. Felt a little awkward, but when we're used to heavily detailed epic fantasy in novel form, I will happily let it slide. A little sad that I have to wait for 2&3 but I don't mind. We usually only get the AA stuff at the end of a book, so we'll probably have to wait till number 3. I think Hoid will be appearing in number 2. Khriss was fine to me; we're used to her being a major nerd scholar so its good to see where she started from

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As someone who has read the prose version of White Sand, I can say that a lot of questions (and concerns) I am seeing here will be addressed in the next two parts of the graphic novel (e.g. the magic theory, Kenton's Sand Mastery). Ais too will see more development, but I agree that she is not very exciting right now.

If you are curious whether Hoid has appeared on page:

Spoiler

He has not, assuming the graphic novel follows the prose in this regard.

As for my personal feelings, I've never been able to get into graphic novels, so it is no surprise that this one didn't work out too well for me. The Sand Masters looked far too similar, the dialogue doesn't feel right (though I suspect that's because it needs to be very snappy due to medium limitations), and it is often a little difficult to follow what happens in the action scenes. But I think all of those things are small prices to pay for just having the thing out there. I do love the portrayal of the Darksiders though, they - or at least Khriss' party - look appropriately like a culture that's more technologically advanced. 

One thing I didn't see anyone bring up was the reference to the sun - or the Sand Lord - being worshipped as a god in Kerza, and granting its followers autonomy. The word was even bolded for emphasis! Makes for a strong argument for a certain Shard being at least somehow related to the sun, if not outright Invested in it. 

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I enjoyed it, I like the fully realized world as opposed to having everything just in my own head! I like the change of Ais to a female character, even though we haven't gotten to see much of her yet. 

I'm not a huge fan of the artistic style, and there are some confusing portions of the book that I had to do some double takes to get. But I still like the novelty of it not being a novel this time. I'd love to have an animated SA archive or other medium for telling the Cosmere's stories. 

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